Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Ofira Seliktar
“The issue of who finances the so-called ‘academic scholarship’ that delegitimizes the State of Israel, and of who supports the various campus activities against it, is extremely complex and multifaceted. The partial initiatives to study this subject are far from adequate.
“Yet we know certain facts concerning this topic. Various foundations, mainly with Arab and Muslim donors, play a leading role in funding Middle East and Israel scholarship throughout the world. Many donations are dispersed through foundations set up by royal families..

A conference at Tel Aviv University detailed the factors that fund the delegitimization of Israel on universities around the world
Zvika Klein, NRG | 05/08/2015 8:32
"Who Sponsors Israel's Delegitimization on Campus?" - This is the title of a study presented today (Friday) in the IAM convention 2015, Tel Aviv University. The conference deals with the discovery and analysis of financial resources behind anti-Israeli initiatives on Western campuses, and this is the first study of its kind in the world, which lists a variety of factors which are funding the delegitimization of Israel in the academy.

The following is the summary of the Roundtable held at Tel Aviv University on May 8, 2015
Professor Ofira Seliktar (Gratz College) provided an overview of the complex process through which academic delegitimization occurs on Western campuses. She emphasized that the BDS movement is nourished by a large academic literature that has come to view the Zionist movement as a colonial creation in the Middle East that dispossessed the native Palestinian population. Subsequently, Israel has been described as an apartheid state deserving of the type of boycott and sanctions that forced South Africa to end its apartheid regime.
The funding for the scholarship that delegitimizes Israel comes from sources that support Middle East centers at major universities, think tanks, and even Islamic studies programs.
Among the major donors in this category are:
Qatar: The Qatar Foundation set up by the Ibn Kahlifa Al Thani ruling family .
Saudi Arabia: The Prince Waleed Al Talal Foundation stands out in the size of its donations in the United States, notably Middle East Centers in elite universities such as Harvard, Yale, Georgetown and Berkeley, among others. Critics have pointed out that Prince Waleed Al Talal Foundation made generous grants to the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University directed by John Esposito, whom many consider to be an apologist for Islam and a prominent critic of Israel; The Sultan bin Abdul Aziz ibn Saud Foundation donated large sums of money to the Middle East Center at Berkeley and other universities; Sultan of Oman Foundation- endowed chair at Harvard University Center for Middle East Studies; Khalid Bin Abdullah, Bin Abdul Rahman al Saud Foundation, endowed chair at Harvard University Middle East Center; Sheik Mohammed bin Issa bin Jaber Foundation;
Iran: Alavi Foundation - grants to more than 30 universities in North America to promote the Shiite version of Islam and Iranian foreign policy. The Alavi Foundation is run by the Mustazafeen Foundation, the largest parastatal conglomerate in Iran created by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
Funding for faculty activism comes from dues to associations, such as American Studies Association or Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Students who support BDS drives receive funding from a variety of sources such as Muslim Students Association that has branches on many campuses and funds allocated by student governance dedicated for inviting speakers and special events.
Dr. Clemens Heni, the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) spoke about anti-Israel faculty in Germany. He noted that the proliferation of Islamic studies programs and Middle East programs in Germany has created a cadre of academics that use their scholarship to produce negative narratives about Israel, not infrequently bordering on the anti-Semitic. Heni emphasized that some of these narratives find their way into publications, including respectable journals and presses.
Dr. Dana Barnett, King's College London and Israel Academia Monitor, offered a case study of five Israeli academics that have profited from opportunities created by foreign donations to Middle East scholarship and activism, such as Neve Gordon, Adi Ophir, Moshe Zuckermann, Yehouda Shenhav, and Shlomo Sand.
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, former Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, gave a review of the history of academic BDS. He noted that those fighting the academic boycott have mixed results; while some actions were successful, others went unopposed.
Dr. Gerstenfeld contended that it is beyond individual academics such as himself to challenge BDS on campus. He blamed the Israeli academic community for failing to respond in an organized manner. Most of his criticism, however, was directed toward the government. Gerstenfeld stated that the government needed to create a special unit to follow the funding and operations of the anti-Israeli activities on campus.

Financing BDS and beyond: Arab and Iranian Money
Ofira Seliktar, Prof. (Em.) Gratz College; Chair Intelligence & Strategy Section, ASMEA
The talk will focus on two levels of financing. The first and more important pertains to decades-long effort to influence the substance of research on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ARAMCO, pioneered this effort by creating academically-oriented foundations that funded a variety of Middle East programs and publications in the United States. The Saudi royal family, as well as the ruling families of the Gulf States, had followed suit. Presently, Qatar is the leading player in this field. Among others, it has signed cooperative ventures with some of the elite academic programs in the United States.
Iran, through its office in the Foreign Ministry and MOIS (the intelligence ministry) a later arrival in the field of academic sponsorship, has aimed at shaping the field of Islam studies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because of the American embargo on relations with Iran, the Iranians have focused on Western Europe, notably Germany.
The second level of financing has focused on BDS and allied infrastructure, including BDS drives, Israel Apartheid Week, etc. The financial nexus here is very complex, as contributions are funneled through a vast network, including Islamist NGOs, pro-Arab and pro-Iranian lobby groups.
The organization and legal structure of academic foundations in the United States has helped in injecting Arab and Iranian money. For instance, the Tide Foundation, acts like a "clearing house" for contributions, but has no obligation to disclosing the source.
Successive Israeli governments and civil groups have never engaged in a focused effort to analyse these networks. To the extent that when funding is discussed, it pertains to New Israel Fund, which is a very small player in the field.

German Foundations, Academic Discourse and the Delegitimization of Israel
Dr. Clemens Heni is a political scientist and the director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), founded in 2011
In his talk Clemens Heni will focus on the relationship of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Germany and anti-Zionism as well as on Islamism or Arab nationalism. Based on his book, “Schadenfreude. Islamic Studies and Antisemitism in Germany after 9/11 (in German, 2011),” he will analyze how leading Islamist figures such as Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Yusuf al-Qaradawi, today’s leading Sunni Islamist, are portrayed by today’s mainstream in Islamic Studies. Many of these scholars are working at universities, which are most often state sponsored in Germany. Some authors, though, also work for NGOs in Israel or in territories of the PA, and reject or distort the analysis of the close collaboration of Nazi Germany and Arab as well as Muslim leaders during the Second World War, for example.

Funding Israeli Scholars to Produce Paradigmatic Literature: A Case Study
Dana Barnett, PhD. King’s College London; Israel Academia Monitor
To preempt charges of anti-Semitism pro-Palestinian activists have favored Israeli scholars. A number of Israeli scholars have been rewarded for producing paradigmatic literature, either by obtaining sabbatical appointments in respectable universities or being invited to conferences, workshops and panel discussions. Some have had their work published in presses supported by pro-Palestinian sources.

Developments of the Academic Boycott of Israel since 2002
Manfred Gerstenfeld, Former Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
The academic boycott of Israel is one aspect of the general boycott call against Israel which was initiated at the NGO Forum at the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
The first attempt at an academic boycott of Israel took place in the UK in 2002. Since then, the academic BDS campaign has gradually expanded to include a number of countries. This has become possible in part due to the negligence of both the Israeli academia and the Israeli government. The academic boycotters of Israel thus incur very little risk in promulgating their hate activities.

The following is a short summary of the conference:
The four speakers at the conference dealt with different aspects of the BDS movement on campus and beyoThe keynote speaker, Kenneth L. Marcus, President & General Counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, talked about What is Anti-Semitic About the Movement to Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction Israel?. He argued that it would be wrong to describe the entire BDS movement as anti-Semitic, but some anti-Semitic elements can be definitely identified there. Marcus used Natan Sharansky’s definition of anti-Semitism as the 3 Ds - delegitimization, demonization and double standards – to prove his point. For instance, those who seek to impose BDS on Israel seldom seek to apply the same measures to countries that have a truly atrocious human rights record. When asked about the double standards, one of the advocates, the head of the American Studies Association, responded that “you have to start somewhere.” Marcus pointed out that fighting this type of anti-Semitism in the BDS movement on American campuses is difficult because it triggers a counter-accusation of stifling free speech.
Dr. Richard Landes, an American historian and author who currently serves as an associate professor in the department of History at Boston University, talked about the Delegitimization of Israel: From the Fringes of the Internet to Mainstream Media. He spoke on the issue of demonization through media that he defined as “cognitive warfare against Israel.“ Landes pointed out that mainstream media are prone to accept Palestinian narratives without checking out their veracity. This so-called “lethal journalism” was most pronounced in the story of Mohammed Al-Dura, a twelve year old boy that was allegedly killed in cold blood by the IDF. Landes noted that lethal journalism caught Israel by surprise and that there has been no effective response to this type of cognitive warfare.
Ben Dror Yamini, the Israeli columnist and researcher talked about "Foundations on which Boycott Campaign is Built On". He suggested that under certain circumstances, such as South Africa, BDS is justified. But he vehemently denied that there are any parallels between Israel and South Africa and asserted that this type of narrative is based on false assertions. The narrative about the Palestinian expulsion in 1948 is taken out of its historical context; WWII and its aftermath saw huge population movements in large parts of the world, including the forced exodus of Jews from Arab countries.
Yemini went on to argue that more recently the Palestinian narrative has been presented within the paradigm of human rights; it holds a special, appeal to young and idealistic students who dream of an utopian world of justice and good will for all. For instance, “eviction notices” are posted on doors in dormitories to recreate the experience of Palestinians who allegedly received such notices from the Israeli authorities.
Ofira Seliktar, a professor of political science at Gratz College, took a broader view of the BDS in her lecture "BDS as a Soft Asymmetrical Conflict: An Intelligence Perspective." Seliktar, who specializes in predictive intelligence, noted that Soft Asymmetrical Conflict (SAC) is a form of twenty first century warfare against Israel. After failing to defeat Israel in conventional wars and through terrorism, the new paradigm relies on economic, legal, political and cultural pressure waged by hundreds of NGO’s and other agents of civil society. Western academy has taken the lead in this novel effort – first by producing writings that redefined Zionism as a colonial movement (i.e. Edward Said’s Orientalism) and deploying pro-Palestinian student groups and their allies to stage events such as Israel Apartheid Week and lead highly publicized divestment votes.
More recently, the European Union gave SAC a huge boost through its Horizon 2020 program, which states that the Geneva Conventions make it illegal to occupy territories and settle civil populations there. As a result, the program would not support academic projects located in the territories (Ariel University and potentially Hebrew University for having parts of its campus on Palestinian land) or research that has an indirect link to the territories.
Israel has been late to understand the importance of SAC, triggering intelligence failures. One involved the Mavi Marmara ship, where it was assumed that the NGOs behind the operation would behave in a peaceful manner when asked to evacuate the vessel. Horizon 2020 is another example of intelligence failure: the push by a coalition of EU Parliament members allied with pro-Palestinian elements to attach the above conditions to the document has been well known. Seliktar concluded that the SAC paradigm requires the creation of a special organization equipped with array of special skills needed to analyze this complex field.

The public is invited to the IAM event on "BDS Campaign Against Israel: On Campus and Beyond" - Wednesday May 14, 2014 at 6pm in Tel Aviv University, Webb 1.
Entrance from gates 1 and 8, paid parking available. Attached invitation.

Regarding “Israel Academia Monitor fears the enemy within” (News, 16 May): your article misses an important part of our round-table debate on academic freedom in Israel.
Radical scholars who use their positions to advocate a political agenda short-change students and taxpayers. The former are deprived of a sound liberal-arts education that values the fair comparison of ideas and the latter are forced to pay salaries to faculty engaged in political propaganda.
As the round table heard, this state of affairs would not be tolerated in public universities in Germany, the UK or the US.
Israel’s expansive definition of academic freedom has hurt the comparative standing of its social science, which trends below Western averages (in contrast, hard sciences and engineering in the country, free from political distortion, score well above average). In a highly competitive global economy, human capital matters: by any measure, Israeli taxpayers receive a poor return on their investment.

Debate on academic politics in Israel has been reignited by Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott a presidential conference after lobbying from Palestinian colleagues.
Meanwhile, a campaigning Israeli organisation has claimed that universities in the country - and the state itself - are being undermined from within by academics with pro-Palestinian viewpoints.
Introducing a round-table event on academic freedom in Tel Aviv on 3 May

Fewer Israeli professors are publishing anti-Israeli articles in foreign journals, according to a study conducted by Israeli . According to Israeli AcademiaMonitor editor Dana Barnett, who spoke to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday, the reason for the decline is simple: far-left professors now know that what they say abroad will be publicized at home as well.

Fewer Israeli professors are publishing anti-Israeli articles in foreign journals, according to a study conducted by Israeli Academia Monitor. According to Israeli AcademiaMonitor editor Dana Barnett, who spoke to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday, the reason for the decline is simple: far-left professors now know that what they say abroad will be publicized at home as well.
“A lecturer who publishes an anti-Israel article in Australia needs to know that it will be read here, too,” Barnett explained. “We translate the articles and publish criticism.”
“We show those lecturers’ true colors,” she added. “We reveal their double standards, their anti-Israel worldview and their lies.”

These days the Middle East is undergoing a profound and historic transformation. Many are trying to understand the developments in the Arab world and in the Arab and Muslim culture and religion. Additionally, Iran’s nuclear aspirations are the cause of a deep concern to many all over the world.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the Director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), a research associate of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is one of Israel's leading figures in understanding the Arab world. He is the Middle East analyst of the daily newspaper “Makor Rishon” as well as other publications. Dr. Kedar is a frequent guest in the Israeli, Arab and international media. In January of 2011, Dr. Kedar gave a very insightful presentation on Capitol Hill on "Why is the Middle East Such a Difficult Area for Americans and Westerners to Understand?”
Dr. Kedar will be on a speaking tour visiting North America between January 17 and February 19, 2013. He is available to be booked for lectures and various presentations. He can be a scholar-in-residence for a weekend or give presentations and lectures during the weekdays. See attached itinerary.
His lectures are about the Middle East, Israel’s existence within the Middle Eastern environment, the struggle over Jerusalem, Anti-Semitism in the Islamic world and Iran.

Uri Blau’s article on IAM is a step in the right direction in the sense that it demystifies some of blanket “right-wing McCarthyism” accusations against a diverse group of critics of left-wing radicalism on Israeli campuses.
Blau makes clear that IAM is not the beneficiary of millions of dollars in donations, a claim that radical academics have repeatedly made. To the contrary, it is a small organization with a very limited budget, but evidently, effective enough to merit a major investigative article.
That said, Blau makes some serious factual mistakes which IAM plans to provide a detailed response to. The following is a general overview of the article.
Blau makes the assertion - common among the left- that IAM monitors anti-Zionist faculty. In fact, even a casual perusal of the articles and book reviews that are published on our website indicate that the term “anti-Zionist” or “pro-Zionist” is not used; had Blau read at least some of this material, he would have reached the same conclusion. IAM has never graded professors on how “pro-Zionist” or “anti-Zionist” their writings are.
IAM position is that the scholars whose work is mentioned, embrace the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship paradigm in liberal arts; in fact, many of these academics freely admit to being critical scholars. As opposed to the positivist (also known as traditionalist ) that views Israel in a fairly positive light, the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm denies Israel domestic and international legitimacy. Scholars who adopt the latter approach consider Israel to be a fruit of European colonialism with no legitimate right to the Holy Land. Indeed, according to some of them, Jews were “invented” as a nation by Zionist intellectual entrepreneurs, mascaraing as nation-builders. Moreover, from the perspective of the neo-Marxist paradigm, domestically, Israel is considered to be a “creeping apartheid” state, or a proto-fascist state.
Rather than acknowledging that two competing paradigms existed in liberal arts, it is easy for radical scholars to charge critics with waging a “McCarthy campaign” against academic freedoms. Still, they need to be reminded that true academic freedoms require a balanced academic discourse to comport with the ideal of a classroom as a “marketplace of ideas.” All those who need their memory refreshed on this issue are urged read the resolution passed by the Council of Higher Education in 2010.

A professor at Tel Aviv University is facing backlash after allegedly having deceived university administration and holding a protest in favor of a Palestinian Authority Arab terrorist.
Dana Barnett of the Israel Academia Monitor organization, which monitors and exposes anti-Israel activities of Israeli academics, told Arutz Sheva on Tuesday that last week several people at Tel Aviv University requested permission to hold a demonstration outside the university against the massacre in Syria. However, said Barnett, the demonstration was in fact a protest in favor of terrorist Hana Shalbi.
Shalbi is an Islamic Jihad terrorist from the village of Burkin near Jenin. She was arrested recently based on “completely certain” intelligence that she had assisted in planning a terrorist attack that was to involve kidnapping an IDF soldier. She had been released in the Shalit deal just months earlier.
Shalbi is one of several PA terrorists in Israeli prisons who are hunger striking in an attempt to force the Prison Service to release them. Several self-described human rights organizations have called on Israel to consider releasing these terrorists.
Barnett told Arutz Sheva that behind the pro-Shalbi demonstration was Tel Aviv University professor Dr. Anat Matar, who has been identified as being one of many leftist intellectuals in Israeli universities who demonize Israel.
According to Barnett, “The protesters said they will demonstrate outside the university about a different issue and in reality they entered the university campus. Among them was Dr. Anat Matar who was holding a huge picture of Shalbi. To date, hundreds of signatures of students calling to fire Matar have been collected. Rather than focusing on her area of expertise, philosophy, she is busy with political activity against Israel.”

Haaretz reporter Talila Nesher's political bias is on display again. She essentially chose to accept the findings of the "blacklist" activists, which include Professor Neve Gordon (BGU).
IAM is not a political organization, does not adopt political positions and does not deal with politicians or any other members of the public. IAM does not oppose the right of academics as private individuals to express opinions including views that are not popular.
IAM's mandate is limited to tracking scholars that use the classroom as an extension of their political agenda. The Council on Higher Education expressed concerns that students of some politically active academics do not benefit from a well-balanced curriculum promoting the ideal of an university as a "marketplace of ideas." As IAM noted, the CHE threatened to shut down the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University if changes are not implemented, because of poor academic standards and excessive politicization.

The Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) watchdog, which “monitors abuses of academic freedom and politicization of Israeli campuses by extremists and radicals,” has found, “Israeli academic institutions have been misused in recent years for radical anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic propagandizing, often by tenured radicals with embarrassing academic records and dubious research credentials.”
The deeper concern, however, is the pervasiveness of such views in Israeli institutions in the State of Israel, which highlights on the one hand how open Israeli academia is, and on the other the absurdity that it would tolerate such extreme views even at the expense of its international legitimacy. Of all the Israeli universities, Ben-Gurion University in the Negev (BGU) has become the leader and chief exporter of many of these attitudes, especially to those Middle East departments in the U.S. that want to appear balanced in the face of charges of anti-Israel biases—a move that at first glance appears welcome.

“We do not call for the execution of leftists at the marketplace. When I draw a rector’s attention to the fact that a certain lecturer calls for the boycott of the institute he works for and by doing so he harms the livelihood of his colleagues, that rector will summon that lecturer and will ask him why is he harming his colleagues.”
Until two years ago Dr. Mordechai Kedar was almost unknown publicly. The lecturer from the Department of Arabic at Bar Ilan University has led a rather tedious academic life, teaching and
guiding students and participating at academic conferences now and then. There is nothing that will make one’s life more interesting or fill one’s blood with adrenaline than this.

These days, everyone wants to understand Arab and Muslim culture, religion and goals. Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University, Israel, who is also the chairman of the Israel Academia Monitor, will be in North America from January 13 to February 14, 2011 and is available to be booked for lectures.

Israel Academia Monitor
In November 2004, Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) began its work and announced itself as "an Israeli watchdog that monitors abuses of academic freedom and politicization of Israeli campuses by extremists and radicals." It claimed to be partly modeled on Campus Watch. Its opening statement continued: "Israeli academic institutions have been misused in recent years for radical anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic propagandizing, often by tenured radicals with embarrassing academic records and dubious research credentials." Israel Academia Monitor aimed to "bring to light statements written by and about the academic extremists and university anti-Zionists...to expose their activities."
Unsurprisingly, because it used, but did not define, terms such as extremists, radicals, and anti-Zionists, the organization received a mixed - being a euphemism for "largely negative" - response from Israeli academia and others. To its credit it published, and continues to do so, the range of responses it receives, including those that are critical. In recent years IAM has sought to moderate its approach with a new mission statement and a revamp of the organization.

What is post-Zionism and why does the academic community all over the globe mostly take a pro-Arab stance, going so far as to call Israel an apartheid state? Dana Barnett, editor of the Israel Academia Monitor joins Tamar Yonah and speaks about the left wing slant in academic circles and why professors defy reason and morality and opt for a more politically correct ideology instead.

1. Members of staff at Tel Aviv University opposed the words of Prof' Alan Dershowitz, the American Lawyer, during a ceremony conferring him an honorary doctorate by the university. Amongst other, Dershowitz attacked lecturers abusing freedom of speech to criticize the government.
As a response Dana Barnett, the editor of Israel Academia Monitor tells Arutz 7 she is happy Dershowitz had the courage to say the truth in the face of the lecturers, "Dershowitz always supported Israel and is familiar with the phenomenon of of Israeli lecturers calling for the boycott of Israel".
2. Lecturers from Tel Aviv University came out in a petition against their colleagues at TAU who called for boycott against Israel, as a result of the Gaza Flotilla incident.
Dana Barnett, the editor of Israel Academia Monitor claims in an interview to Arutz 7 that Tel Aviv University is going through a positive process and she hopes in the end the rest of the academia will join the struggle against those negative elements.

Dana Barnett of Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) says the number of Israeli university professors who write or speak against Israel has dropped to about 70 - partially thanks to her organization.
IAM was founded in 2004, Barnett told Arutz-7’s Benny Tucker, to fight the phenomenon of Israeli professors and academics who “receive their salaries from the Israeli taxpayer, yet who speak against Israel freely and call on other countries to boycott it. This is unacceptable.”

University lecturers also say they are being silenced. It is done by the website of an organization called Israel Academia Monitor, which systematically documents every academic, from students to professors, who the website operators believe “undermines Jewish Zionist interests,” including signing petitions, attending conferences, speaking to the media and writing articles that criticize government policy towards the Palestinians. “Based on that monitoring, the organization submits an annual report to the various universities’ boards of trustees, with the warning ‘this is what people do with your money,’” says Dr. Amiel Vardi, a lecturer in classical studies at Hebrew University and an activist in Ta’ayush.
“Yes, we definitely monitor academics who want to destroy Israel,” confirms site editor Dana Barnet, “based on what they write or say at international conferences or interviews to the media. Academics who call at international conferences to boycott Israel, or cooperate with pro-Arab organizations such as Adala and B’Tselem, we all have to know what they are doing. We definitely think that just because of our monitoring those academics curtailed their activities.”

Dana Barnett, founder of Israel Academia Monitor, has launched a petition demanding that Mr Gordon be sacked from his position as chair, that his courses be treated as elective rather than compulsory for his students, and that he be denied travel and research funding

Permit me to respond to Mr. Pogrund’s criticism of Israel Academia Monitor and his derisive characterization of our web site as a platform for “vigilantes” and “dangerous cranks” who “use crude censorship to shut up academics.”
As the introductory paragraph on our home page makes clear, IAM strongly supports the tradition of academic freedom that is an essential component of higher education in Israel. At the same time, it is committed to Israel’s security and its existence as a Jewish and democratic state. In keeping with this commitment, IAM brings to the attention of an informed and concerned public the worrisome phenomenon of a small sector in the academic community whose adherents abuse the hallmark of academic freedom to engage in activities that besmirch Israel, distort its history, lend support to calls for international boycotts, and encourage actions against the legal and democratic institutions of the country.

Israeli academics are being watched. Vigilantes check what they say or write - and, if they are judged "anti-Israel," incite donors to the universities and colleges where they teach to act against them. Students are encouraged to spy on their teachers and to report what they say.
Academics on the left are the targets. They are vilified as "Israel's academic fifth column" and "our inner scourge." They are called "traitors" and are accused of "treasonous betrayal" and of wanting "to suck up to and be accepted by the enemy."
One vigilante group is Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) started five years ago by the American-born Dana Barnett

Omar Barghouti, an outspoken anti-Israel activist who has accused the Jewish state of “genocide,” is currently a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Barghouti, who is studying philosophy with a specialization in ethics, is at the same time calling on the international community to boycott Israeli academics and universities.
While Barghouti has learned at TAU for some time while calling for it and other Israeli schools to be boycotted, it was his statements following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza that apparently spurred his fellow students to action. Following Barghouti's latest speeches abroad accusing Israel of murder and genocide, and of planning a Holocaust against Arabs, more than 11,500 people have signed a petition calling for him to be dealt with. The petition offers three options: convincing Barghouti that his position is intellectually dishonest, suing him for libel, or expelling him from the school.

IAM, the Israel Academia Monitor organization, has set itself the goal of alerting the public to the outspokenly anti-Israel professors and others in Israeli universities.
Its top project at the moment: A drive to have the positions of Tel Aviv University doctoral student Omar Barghouti – “clearly an enemy of Israel,” IAM says – exposed and publicized.
IAM has initiated a petition against Barghouti, a member of the same clan that includes convicted terrorist murderer and Palestinian Authority leader Marwan Barghouti. The petition is addressed to the Rector, President, and supporters of Tel Aviv University, and states:
“Literally thousands of people all over the world are working very hard to demonize and de-legitimize Israel. An especially strident and persuasive voice is that of Omar Barghouti, whose devastating accusations against Israel can be found on dozens of internet sites, newspapers all over the world and even at international conferences. What makes his work especially repugnant is his wide use of half-truth, selective omission and outright lie. He is clearly an enemy of Israel.

Campus Watch is a disgrace for anyone who believes in the concept of freedom of speech, and so it would appear is the copy organization Israel Academia Monitor, an interview with which appeared in the April 7 Jerusalem Post. It is little wonder that Dana Barnett was unprepared, or more likely unable to give a single name of an academic who has not been hired or promoted at an Israeli university for professing right-wing political views. I sat for three years on the promotions and tenure committee of my own university faculty. Despite the fact that the members of that committee shared a diverse range of political views, not once was the political critique allowed to intervene in what was, and remains, a very tough and demanding, but very fair, system of professional mobility. ...
Too many academics here suffer from the self-need to engage in political polemics. It is especially the case among those within the social sciences whose focus of research deals with these sensitive social and political topics, and who sometimes are unable to differentiate between their personal views and professional analysis, each of which feeds into the other. But in this respect there is no difference between right- and left-wing critique, except for the fact that he who practices the former is labeled as being patriotic, and the latter as treasonous. The former is okay, the latter is to be vilified and, if possible, prevented from moving up the academic ladder.
The academic McCarthyism of the Right endangers Israeli democracy and society. It threatens the very basis of freedom of speech. The self-styled patriots are causing enormous damage to the country and should be prevented from assuming the cloak of self-appointed defenders of the common good, which they are clearly not.

Dana Barnett, together with a small group of volunteers, has been waging a grim battle for the last four years, countering the highly damaging activities of some very influential people in Israel. Barnett, 42, heads the Israel Academia Monitor, which through its website: www.israel-academia-monitor.com reports on libelous articles, lectures and statements by a large number of Israel’s senior university lecturers and professors. Much of what is propagated by these people, is based on half-truths and apparent antipathy for their homeland. Some have questionable affiliations with other elements hostile to the State of Israel.

Israel Academia Monitor
email August 26, 2008
English-language information, though given unfriendly, about an initiative of Hebrew University students (coming from the right-wing's self-appointed and industrious 'academia monitor') [ed]
In an attempt 'to out-shine' the senior post-Zionist lecturers in their campus, a group of young academics from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem established a new left-wing organization that put the onus on Israel for all the ills in the region and see almost nothing wrong on the other side.

In his new book, Zand says that Judaism is a religion and is connected to no nation.
The video above features students protesting outside one of the professor's lectures with megaphones and signs declaring that academic freedom does not allow one to distort and slander. The professor responds.
The protest was organized by several student groups including Israel Academia Monitor.

Last week, YNet reprinted an article by Aaron Klein, which purports to be about anti-Zionist positions held by Israeli academics, but is really only a summary of positions published on a single website — Israel Academia Monitor.
It’s quite possible that many of those quoted on this website are, indeed, anti-Zionist. But Klein’s article does absolutely nothing to investigate the website’s claims. He merely summarizes them.
And some of the site’s claims seem a bit hyperbolic.

CAIRO - Appalled by incessant crimes against innocent Palestinians, Israeli professors are increasingly speaking out and encouraging students and soldiers to dissent government policies. "It is estimated that some 20 to 25% of people who teach the Humanities and Social Sciences in Israel's universities and colleges have expressed extreme anti-Zionist positions," the Israel-Academia Monitor said in a new study.
It said they have engaged in public demonstrations and sponsored petitions addressed to Israeli soldiers not serve in the occupied West Bank.

Watchdog monitors 'anti-Jewish trends' of Jerusalem universities
Israeli college professors who label their country a Nazi apartheid regime, urge the downfall of the Jewish state, and speak at conventions calling for the boycott of Israel?
Universities in Jerusalem that give awards to academic papers complaining Jewish soldiers don't rape enough Arab women and encourage students to protest the anti-terror policies of the Israeli military?
These trends are rampant across college campuses in the country, according to one website - Israel Academia Monitor, which has been documenting what it calls the anti-Zionist behavior of the senior staff at major Israeli universities.

A specter is haunting the far-left fever swamps found inside Israeli universities: "Israel Academia Monitor." It is Israel's new cousin to the "Campus Watch" web site that operates in the U.S., which has been controversial because of its practice of publishing some of the loopier citations and statements made by faculty members in North America who pose as Middle East Studies "experts." Israel Academia Monitor provides a well-d'ocumented record of the most outrageous statements and seditious a'ctivities of Israel's own academic extremists. Organized by campus, it makes no secret of its desire to see the informatio'n reach donors to those universities, as well as alumni, journalists, and others. And it has the extremists running scared.

The following is a transcript of a radio show discussing the radical Islamic Agenda in education and how it is also being carried out by more than just radical Muslims. Universities worldwide are being targeted for Holy Jihad and the show emphasizes how even some Jews and Christians are behind what is happening. This has even extended into the universities inside Israel itself, something most people in the West (and even Israel) are unaware of. Now, Israel-academia-monitor is changing that by informing its readers of the academics in Israel who are working diligently to dismantle the Jewish state.

'The author of the latest paper was aided by a group called the "Israel Academia Monitor," which keeps an eye on the leftists scattered in Israel's universities. The operation is conducted in English, and the site's homepage (www.israel-academia-monitor.com) warns donors about where their gifts to Israeli universities are liable to end up.
It would be sad if it were not pathetic to the point of ridiculousness. ... Now this enlightened attitude has given way to the irresponsible use of the terms "anti-Semitic" and "anti-Zionist," which accompany the names of senior academics in Israel, and to wretched pseudo-psychological analyses of the pathological motives of your average Jewish left-winger. '

A Trojan Horse in Israeli universities! ...I was speaking as his guest for Israel-Academia-Monitor.com and giving details about an upcoming conference to be held this November in Jerusalem titled “Dialogue Under Occupation”
http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?type=large_advic&advice_id=5795&page_data. The Conference, featuring Arab college professors mostly from United States universities all presenting the usual mantra against Israel’s existence, also features numerous Israeli
academics to represent supposedly the Israeli side. The “dialogue” part of the conference’s title is a deception though; the Israeli college professors will do nothing less than to validate the Arab professors’ unending complaints against and their goals of dismantling the Jewish state.

Bash-Israel Conference Coming to Jerusalem Featuring Numerous Israeli Academics
Lee Kaplan, investigative journalist for Israel-academia-monitor.com, reports that Israeli professors are planning to gather at Al Quds University for a “Dialogue Under Occupation” anti-Israel conference on November 14-16.

Just for our collective information, the highly distinguished "Israeli Academia Monitor" has been following communication on this mailing list. Note that some of the manipulations made by the brilliant editors of the website are libelous, prima facie

We at Israel Academia Monitor are the Israeli analogue to "Campus Watch" in the United States. We monitor and expose the anti-Israel political extremism rampant among the faculty members at Israeli universities, including Ben Gurion University. These activities include collaboration with anti-Semites from around the world, promotion of international boycotts of Israel and Israeli institutions, calls for Israel's annihilation, and open endorsements of terrorism against Israel.

Of course, critics of the Israeli academic left have been attacked for some time. David Newman, professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University, complained in The Times Higher in April about right-wing McCarthyists attempting to suppress academic "diversity". This from a man whose department does not include one non-leftist. Free speech is indeed what the hysteria is all about

It represents a "group of donors, concerned academics, students, researchers and others" who wish to "bring to light statements and articles written by and about the academic extremists and university anti-Zionists" and highlight "abuses of academic freedom in Israel".

The scandal of anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and sometimes anti-Semitic radicalism among Israeli academics is now highlighted on a new website. Modeled after Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes’s site for monitoring Middle East studies on North American campuses, Israel Academic Monitor was created by a group of academics, journalists, donors, students, and others with the aim of monitoring abuses of academic freedom in Israel’s universities. These abuses include not only writings and statements that deny Israel’s legitimacy, advocate its destruction, or compare it with the Nazi and other worst regimes in history, but also calls for widespread insurrection and mutiny by Israeli soldiers and support for international efforts at boycotting Israel and ostracizing the teachers and students of these universities themselves.